Snap­shot of ru­ral debt in Queens­land

TO­TAL ru­ral debt in Queens­land is $17.2 bil­lion, a rise of 1.6 per cent since 2011, ac­cord­ing to the 2017 Queens­land Ru­ral Debt Sur­vey.

Launch­ing the sur­vey at Par­lia­ment House yes­ter­day, Agri­cul­tural In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment and Fish­eries Min­is­ter Mark Furner said the av­er­age debt per bor­rower was down 12 per cent to just un­der $1 mil­lion.

“Un­sur­pris­ingly, the beef in­dus­try at $9.4 bil­lion, or 54 per cent, rep­re­sented the largest pro­por­tion of to­tal ru­ral debt in Queens­land, fol­lowed by cot­ton ($1.3 bil­lion or 8 per cent), sugar ($1 bil­lion or 6 per cent) and grains ($0.93 bil­lion or 5 per cent),” Mr Furner said.

The 2017 Queens­land Ru­ral Debt Sur­vey was un­der­taken by the Queens­land Ru­ral and In­dus­try De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Queens­land Gov­ern­ment Statis­ti­cians Of­fice, with the sup­port of all ma­jor ru­ral lenders in Queens­land and in­sights from agri­cul­tural in­dus­try as­so­ci­a­tions.

Ru­ral debt is de­fined as the to­tal in­debt­ed­ness of all farm­ers/ru­ral en­ter­prises through­out Queens­land, where the ser­vic­ing of the ru­ral debt re­lies pri­mar­ily on ru­ral-gen­er­ated in­come.

QRIDA chief ex­ec­u­tive Cameron MacMil­lan said the ap­par­ent pay­ing down of debt in 2017 by farm­ers cap­i­tal­is­ing on im­proved re­turns for some com­modi­ties in 2016-17 was also re­flected in the strong growth in farm man­age­ment de­posits in Queens­land, which dou­bled in value be­tween 2011 and 2017 to $1.2 bil­lion.

See the RDS over­view, full re­port and tech­ni­cal re­view at www.qrida.qld.gov.au/ ru­ral-debt-sur­vey